There are many cases where a specific document or item has significant value, such as lottery tickets, cash-out tickets from slot machines, video lottery terminals or other gaming machines, promotional games where presenting a certain item, such as a bottle top, results in the presenter winning a prize, sweepstakes tickets, promotional coupons or vouchers, store credit slips, and event tickets to popular venues (football games, concerts, etc.). Such items, which may be printed or electronic documents, are often provided with a unique identifier, such as a serial number, that can then be checked against a list of item values or winners or valid items, in order to determine whether an item tendered for redemption or use is an authentic item.
In many cases, a database of all issued documents, containing sufficient information to recreate the document, is kept at a central location. As these documents are redeemed, their database entries are so marked.
With some lottery games, a player attempts to predict the outcome of some future event. For example, a player may select 6 numbers from the values 1 to 49, hoping that those 6 values will be randomly drawn by the Lottery on a specific future date. When that future date arrives, the Lottery randomly may pick 6 numbers from 1 to 49, called Winning Numbers. The player may win a prize based on the number of his selections that match the Winning Numbers. Sometimes, the prize for matching all 6 numbers is quite high—perhaps millions of dollars.
When the player places his original wager, all information about the wager is typically placed in a database, and that information is included on a wager receipt, e.g., by printing it on a printed wager receipt, storing it on a smart card or other electronic media, etc. When the winning numbers are known, it is possible to scan the database and recognize which tickets are winners. Normally, the amount won is also included in the database, although for future draw lotteries this information will not be known until after a drawing occurs. When a winning wager is redeemed or cashed, it will typically be marked as such to prevent the same wager from being cashed again.